EXPLORATION IN ALASKA IN 10,0" — GIL.MORE J" ) 



sawed sections polished for paper-weights, on which were etched 

 representative scenes and animals of Alaska. The life restoration 

 of the mammoth with its long hair and curved tusks appeared to be 

 a favorite subject. In one instance a miniature of the mammoth 

 had been carved from it. This carving and etching is done by the 

 Indians and Eskimo, many of whom become quite adept at this line 

 of work. Similar objects were observed in the curio stores at 

 Nome. The Skagway dealers obtain most of their tusks from the 

 Klondike region, while the Nome dealers procure the ivory used by 

 them from the Eschscholtz Bay, Buckland. and Kobuk River local- 

 ities. 



In 1854 Sir John Richardson said : 



"Eskimos are in the habit of employing the soundest tusks for the 

 formation of various utensils ; and the American fossil ivory has for 

 at least a century, and for a longer period of unknown duration, been 

 an article of traffic with the Tchutche of the opposite shores of 

 Beering Straits ; so that we can venture upon no calculation of the 

 multitudes of mammoths which have found graves in several icy 

 cemeteries of the American coast of Beering Sea." 



Dr. W. H. Dall 1 tells of obtaining "in 1880 a deep ladle as large 

 as a child's head, carved, handle and all, out of a solid tusk of mam- 

 moth ivory by those people," referring here to the Eskimo. 



The writer also saw pieces of tusks fashioned into sled runners, 

 having holes at intervals by which they were lashed to the wooden 

 framework above. On the Yukon it was observed the Indians sonic- 

 times used sections of tusks as weights for sinking their salmon nets. 



An account of this fossil ivory would not be complete without a 

 mention of the blue phosphate of iron sometimes formed by the 

 decomposition of the tusks and used by the Alaskan Eskimo as a 

 pigment. 



Sir John Richardson was the first to make note, in 1854, of this 

 phosphate 2 (Vivianite) occurring between the plates, of the exfoli- 

 ated tusks. The writer saw this blue stain on many of the tusks 

 examined by him, and it was particularly noticeable on those just 

 recently removed from the ground. The same iron phosphate was 

 found in the metacarpal bones of the bison collected on the Nowitna 

 River. 



1 Dall, W. H. : Seventeenth Annual Report, U. S. Geol. Surv., pt. 1, p. 857. 



" In this connection it is interesting to quote from Warren's report on 

 Mastodon giganteas: "On burning the bone, the ash which remains is of a 

 beautiful blue color, owing to the presence of phosphate of iron, which appears 

 to have been formed from the iron which had penetrated into the bone from 

 the marl surrounding the skeleton." 



